Ex-traffic wardens held

Kochi: The Kochi special branch police on Friday arrested four persons including three former traffic wardens on charges of cheating a woman by promising her a job in the police department.

The traffic wardens were identified as Shaimon P Paul (33) of Kollad in Kottayam, Bijoy Mathew (26) of Olassa in Kottayam and Manu Francis of Mulavukad in Ernakulam district. The fourth accused was one Raheesh (35) of Edappally in Kochi who helped the trio forge police ID cards and documents to cheat the woman.

According to police, Shaimon was the one who first got acquainted with the victim from Trippunithura while he was working as a traffic warden almost a year back. “The trio was recruited to the traffic department not by the police, but by a private agency.

But they were terminated owing to regular absence from service. However Shaimon promised the woman, who was working in an event management company then, the job of an ‘assistant’ in the police department later and even took her and her father to Thiruvananthapuram,” said Tomy Sebastian, the assistant commissioner of special branch police.

He allegedly made the victim and her father wait outside the Fort police station. He, then, entered the station and came out later with a fake letter in which it was written that the girl was recruited as an ‘assistant’ in the traffic west police station in Kochi. The letter was forged at an internet café run by Raheesh at Penta Menaka shopping complex in Kochi.